A songbook of progressive/protest music for the twenty-first century. Dozens of anthems from 1970 to the present, from around the world, all with an essential "hook" that makes them ideal for progressive mobilizations and celebrations.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

"Wind of Change" - Scorpions

It's a funny thing, the iconic reach of this song. Written by Scorpions vocalist Klaus Meine, it's one of the premier power ballads of all time -- one of the few globally successful ones sung by a continental European band. You're as likely to hear its whistled opening refrain in Argentina as in Uzbekistan, in St. Petersburg as in Johannesburg.

"Wind of Change" is remembered as the theme song of arguably the last great political-cultural moment in world politics -- the collapse of communism in Central Europe and the former USSR in 1989-90. It was indeed inspired by those events: Scorpions played in Moscow in 1989, at the height of Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign of glasnost (openness). But the song wasn't released until November 1990, and didn't become an international hit until well into 1991. It went on to be voted "Song of the Century" in a German ZDF network poll. As I say, you hear it damn near everywhere.

Adorable and just a little kitsch, "Wind of Change" draws its central motif not from Central Europe, but from Africa. The British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, addressing a recalcitrantly racist parliament in South Africa in February 1960, declared that a "wind of change" was sweeping the African continent -- one of national liberation and political independence. (His speech ever since has been remembered as the "Winds of Change" speech, but it was WIND, and Scorpions got it right.)

The direct references in "Wind of Change", however, are not to Africa but to post-Soviet Russia -- as the video (below) also makes clear. The Moskva river and Gorky Park are mentioned at the outset, establishing an ambience of intoxicated emancipation that carries through the anthemic and only slightly cringe-inducing chorus ("the magic of the moment / On a glory night ..."):

Follow the Moskwa

Down to Gorky Park

Listening to the wind of change

An August summer night

Soldiers passing by

Listening to the wind of change

The world is closing in

Did you ever think

That we could be so close, like brothers

The future's in the air

Can feel it everywhere

Blowing with the wind of change

Take me to the magic of the moment

On a glory night

Where the children of tomorrow dream away

In the wind of change ...

The wind of change

Blows straight into the face of time

Like a storm wind that will ring the freedom bell

For peace of mind

Let your balalaika sing

What my guitar wants to say

Take me to the magic of the moment

On a glory night

Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams

With you and me

Take me to the magic of the moment

On a glory night

Where the children of tomorrow dream away

In the wind of change

Inseparably connected as "Wind of Change" now is with perhaps the greatest mass-freedom movement of the past four or five decades, one would expect to see it deployed where activists are pressing for their own national liberation and/or democratization. (I just bet this was a popular song in North Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring of the last few years.) Anyone wishing to express their support for such movements could do far worse than look to Scorpions' epic ballad.

Here's the original video of "Wind of Change":

And a live version with symphonic backing:

Scorpions have also recorded Spanish and Russian-language versions of the song.Other ResourcesAvailable on Scorpions, Crazy World(1991).

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Adam Jones, Ph.D.

We need new anthems. "We Shall Overcome" and "If I Had a Hammer" and "Give Peace a Chance" all had their moment, but they now sound dated and even clichéd. This blog proposes a new songbook (see list below) -- with selections from 1970 to the present -- for the activists of the twenty-first century. To qualify as anthems, these tracks must (a) be broadly positive/ progressive in content; (b) have an essential and substantial "hook" (a line, a verse, a chorus) that could realistically be sung by many progressive people at once, whether for protest or celebration; (c) reflect the ever more globalized world of activism, which means I'm always on the lookout for diverse materials from the Global South; and (d) be appealing to me personally, or why would I be doing this? I'll be blogging over fifty of my own proposals, and I welcome suggestions for further entries. You can share your comments at the end of each entry, and email me with your feedback. Please also let me know if you find any broken links. Now -- let's raise our voices! Adam

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